Boris Vladimirovich Golitsyn

[1] He also keenly studied music and dance, gaining him the nickname "Boris-Vestris" after the French dancer Auguste Vestris.

He continued his education as a sub-lieutenant at the École militaire in Paris during the last years of the Ancien Regime; he did not meet Napoleon Bonaparte who left the school in October 1785.

The correspondence of the elder of the Golitsyn brothers attests to his deep interest in analyzing and comprehending the events of the French Revolution.

[2] In 1791 Catherine the Great had ordered the whole family to leave Paris and get back to Moscow, but they first visited Rome, where the brothers were portrayed by Hugh Douglas Hamilton.

As well as being a skilled musician and dancer, he also tried writing in his youth, publishing 'Aurora' and 'Diogenes and Glyceria' in The Literary Almanac in 1788 when only twenty years old.